Two certainties: death and Thatchers

Mrs Thatcher said that at the beginning of the Falklands War. Which was brave, because in most situations, as you’re going into a war, you’d at least want a leader who knew the meaning of basic military terminology.

We can only imagine her wild confusion on learning the Argentinians had suffered huge defeats.

She’s been dead for years now, and yet – here I am – still yammering on about Thatcher, uselessly thrashing at her corpse with the pathetic fronds of what passes for wit in this benighted ago.

I’m doing another show about her at the end of the month.

I told a friend and they asked me why I was doing another show about Thatcher. I said I didn’t think I did that many shows about Thatcher. They pointed out that every show I’ve done since 2009 has featured Margaret Thatcher in some form or another.

I even did a seance for her.

They wondered if it wasn’t a bit creepy, if I wasn’t just making money out of the misery of a demented, helpless, vulnerable old lady. I think that’s what she would have wanted.

But yes, from The Thatcher Seance to the recounting of her final minutes in The Bowler Debates, she’s always been there, hovering, like a vulture. Like a vulture with less compassion than other vultures.

In everything I write, in everything I do, it seems like the big problem we’re addressing is Thatcher. A dead woman who hasn’t been in power for a quarter of a century.

And yet we’ve got someone trying out their best Thatcherisms at PMQs. We’ve got a Labour Party ready to split, ready to be led by a Welsh nonentity that no-one really cares for…

It’s like she’s reaching out from beyond the grave, demanding we pay her theatrical tribute, refusing to die until we’ve exorcised her from ourselves.

But it’s not like anyone even comes. Last time we did this show we had six people at one performance at The Hen & Chickens.

2 comments

It is obvious why you are harping on Thatcher, it is because we have a Thatcher Mark II as prime minister. Thatcher would have LOVED the threatened return of the grammar school and the re-appointment of the two most failed previous government ministers, Jeremy Hunt and Chris Grayling, the May equivalent of Willie Whitelaw and Cecil Parkinson.